When She Was Bad

“I know that,” said Lily; the doctors chuckled pleasantly, pointlessly again, as though she’d been cracking jokes left and right.

“The way we do that is by making you as happy and comfortable as possible. Gourmet cuisine or comfort food, as you prefer-I warn you, you may put on a few pounds; I certainly have.” He patted his belly. “Walks in the arboretum, swimming in the lap pool, movies in our own little theater-basically anything that will help you avoid stress, since stress is the number-one trigger for alter switches.”

“No kidding,” said Lily, to another round of forced chuckles.

“That’s the spirit,” said Corder. “Now, if you’re both ready, I’d like to show you around. And if you don’t mind, Irene, there’s someone I’d like Lily to meet. Someone who’s, ah, been through what she’s been through, and come out the other side.”

It took Irene another few seconds to realize what Corder had in mind; when it dawned on her, she felt a sudden chill, followed by a churning in her lower bowel, as if she’d just polished off a plateful of bad mussels.

4

No matter how badly Lyssy’s day was going, he always felt better in the arboretum. His senses started coming alive the moment he passed through the entrance arch, two red-lacquered vertical timbers supporting a slanting, overlapping red lintel beam, which together, according to Dr. Corder, formed an oriental character symbolizing tranquillity. Lyssy drank in the dappled light, the satisfying crunch of the blue-gray pea gravel underfoot, the dry biting scent of the evergreens, the harsh chatter of the jays.

Sitting with Dr. Al on a marble bench at the end of a short allee of pine trees were an older woman with helmet-shaped, reddish-blond hair, and a dark-haired girl in jeans and an oversize leather bomber jacket, huddled with her knees together and her elbows pressed against her sides, as if she were waiting for a bus in the cold. Lyssy’s heart went out to her-he would, he thought, have recognized her as a new patient even if Wally the psych tech hadn’t already clued him in in the elevator on their way down.

Dr. Al performed the introductions. Lyssy stuck out his hand, palm down to hide the scars, shook hands with each woman in turn, and asked them how they were. They both said they were fine; the girl asked him how he was in return.

“Just fine,” he replied, glancing over to Dr. Al to see how he was doing, phatically speaking.

Dr. Al gave him a circled-thumb-and-forefinger okay sign and an encouraging nod. “Lyssy knows the arboretum like the back of his hand,” he told Lily. “Perhaps he’d, ah, be willing to show you around.”

“My pleasure,” said Lyssy, crooking his arm the way he’d seen men do it in old movies. But Lily made no effort to take it, leaving him standing there with one elbow awkwardly akimbo for a few seconds, before he turned and limped away up the gravel path. After a frightened-doe backward glance toward Dr. Cogan, who gave her an encouraging nod, Lily followed Lyssy. Wally started after them, but Corder caught his arm.

“Let’s give them a little time to get to know each other, Walter,” he said.

“It’s not so bad here, really,” Lyssy explained, when Lily had caught up to him. “Everybody on the staff is nice-the mean ones don’t last long. And the patients on 1-East aren’t even very crazy. Dr. Al calls them the Desperate Housewives-some of them come here more for a rest than anything else. If they have enough money, of course.

“Then there’s the ODDs and CODs-those are teenagers with oppositional defiant disorder or conduct disorder. Dr. Al says their parents send ’em here either as a voluntary alternative to military school or an involuntary alternative to reform school. They’re mostly on 2-East, where the game room is. He treats ’em with behavior mod-he says the smart ones usually figure it out pretty quick.”

He was interrupted by maniacal laughter from somewhere overhead. They looked up, saw a bird with a round red cap clinging vertically to the trunk of the oak. “That’s an acorn woodpecker,” Lyssy explained. “The other day I saw one of ’em fly into a wire-”

Lily flinched.

“No, no, it didn’t hurt itself,” he added quickly. “Just clipped it with a wing, caught itself in midair, then it was all like-” He puffed out his chest, darted his head around stiffly-a dead-on imitation of an embarrassed woodpecker: “‘I meant to do that, really I did.’”

“That’s pretty good,” said Lily, smiling tentatively.

“Want to hear my imitation of Dr. Al?”

“Sure.”

He glanced around to make sure the other three were out of earshot, then drew his chin back against his chest to double it. “‘Perhaps, ah, Lyssy would be willing to, ah, show you around.’”

Lily’s smile faded as a tall, unshaven man shuffled toward them wearing a seersucker bathrobe over pajamas and slippers. Instinctively she dropped back and ducked behind Lyssy. “Don’t sweat it,” he whispered, proud at how she’d sought his protection. “That’s Colonel Lamp. He’s a schizo. Completely harmless-they keep him medicated to the gills. Here, watch this.” As he passed the old fellow, Lyssy snapped off a salute.

Stiffly, the colonel drew himself up to his full height to return the salute, but missed his forehead by a few inches, hitting himself in the side of the jaw instead. “Carry on,” he said thickly, spittle flying.

“Boo-yah,” replied Lyssy.

The path looped and forked and curled in on itself so many times that after walking for a few minutes, they were only twenty or thirty yards from the entrance, as the crow flies. By then Lyssy’s limp had grown more pronounced-he had to use the railing to help him across the wooden footbridge, red-lacquered like the entranceway, that arched steeply over a little streamlet with cement banks bordered by flower beds.

On the far side of the bridge, terraced steps led up to a cozy-looking little domed gazebo with flowering vines climbing the trellised sides. They sat next to each other with a good eighteen inches of marble bench separating them. Try as she might to convince herself that it would okay to ask him about his limp, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. They sat in silence, listening to the maniacal laughter of the woodpeckers. “Have you seen your room yet?” he asked eventually.

“Just for a second. It’s on the second floor of the front building? Kind of peach colored, with an adjoining bathroom?”

“That’s just the observation suite,” Lyssy told her. “It’s only temporary, until they decide how close of an eye they need to keep on you. A word to the wise, though: there’s a reason they call it the observation suite.”

But the warning did not fully register-nor would it, until the following morning. “Can I ask you a personal question?” Lily asked him after another uncomfortable pause.

Lyssy’s heart sank. Here it comes, he thought. For a few minutes there, he’d allowed himself to hope that she hadn’t recognized him, that she didn’t know anything about his murderous past. “Go ahead,” he said, bracing himself.

“Is it true you used to have DID, and Dr. Corder cured you?”

“Oh, that,” said Lyssy, almost giddy with relief. “Yeah, sure-I haven’t had an alter switch in like, two years or something. No fugue states, no blackouts. Sometimes, though…. “But he caught himself just in time. No sense scaring her, when Dr. Al would have wanted him to be as encouraging as possible. Besides, out here in the sweet air of a summer afternoon, it was easy to believe he’d only imagined the dark place and the muttering voice.

And even if he hadn’t, divulging the existence of either would have been risky-if the girl passed his misgivings on to Dr. Al, it would mean an end to Lyssy’s hard-earned privileges. No more trips to the game room to hang out with the ODDs and CODs, no more meals in the dining hall, and worst of all, no more visits to the director’s residence to visit Alison and Mrs. Corder-Lyssy would be spending his remaining time at the Institute in a locked room on the locked ward.

“Well, you know, sometimes, it seems like it’s almost too good to be true,” he finished awkwardly.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” said the girl. Then those dark round eyes narrowed. “But if you’re better, how come you’re still here?”

“Actually, I’m due to leave pretty soon,” said Lyssy, truthfully enough.